


distant eyes; you’ll never walk alone

by peaksykid



Category: Tron (Movies), Tron - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, College, Cult Rituals, Dark Academia, Drinking, F/M, M/M, Multi, Possession, doppelgangers, kinda inspired by The Secret History, yknow all normal stuff you do at college
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2020-07-25 23:01:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20033779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peaksykid/pseuds/peaksykid
Summary: In which four programming students in the 80’s accidentally get involved in digital-world cult rituals;Or;Flynn, Alan, Lora, and Roy get serious about putting their soul into their work.(a dark academia!college!au.)(title is from separate ways worlds apart)





	1. from the past until completion

No one in the class had liked the idea at first. Course, that wasn’t surprising to Roy. Most of the other CS students weren’t really fans of analyzing literature—it was the sort of thing their parents harped about during lazy summers, lectures them for not doing when they’d rather be watching SNL or going out driving.

They were supposed to find a book, and incorporate it into their coding projects somehow. How, Professor Dillinger didn’t say. Claimed it had to be creative, or whatever, or they wouldn’t get credit. 

Flynn had smirked at that, in the way he smirked at things he didn’t like. In hindsight, that should’ve been the first red flag.   


Roy and Flynn weren’t that close. He’d known Alan since high school, and met Lora when she transferred here, but Flynn was a wild card. His arrival had pushed Roy to the sidelines of his own friend group, as Kevin had somehow slotted himself right in between Roy’s two friends and locked in tight. 

And yet Roy could never bring himself to hate him. He had a charm about him, a mischief with a gleam to it, and it was hard to deny.

It was why Roy agreed to do their project with them, and why he found himself standing outside the door to the old, disused side of the university library with Alan and Flynn, waiting for Lora to come out with, as she’d promised to, “the weirdest book she could find.”

“She’s been in there for a long time,” Alan, musing.

“You think she got lost?” Roy, more than a little concerned; he’d never been back there before, and this part of the building had the aura of something from a bad fantasy novel. Made him nervous.

“Should I go in and goose her in the back? Bet that’ll freak her out.” Flynn, half kidding, half not.

“KEVIN, you asshole—“

Roy’s rebuke was cut short by Lora’s dramatic reappearance—slamming the old-section doors shut behind her and clutching a book close to her chest.

“Well?” Alan was curious, expectant, trying to peer over the spine. Lora grinned, more excited than Roy had seen her all year, and spun around with her prize.

“LOOK at this, guys;” and she held the book aloft in front of her so that the boys could see.

_ “Rituals of the Surrogate Dream Network,”  _ the title read, accompanied by a cover illustration of a complex geometric prism with many intersecting lines. Roy couldn’t count the sides on it.

“Some new-age book?” Alan was skeptical.

“No, it’s not new-age...well maybe,” she admitted, “but some of the stuff in here is really old, actually,” Lora said. “I mean, it’s a recently published book, but it’s some sort of book on the history of magic superstitions and that type of thing. C’mere and look at it.”

They all leaned over the table to examine the object in question. Its pages were illustrated, each adorned with poems and strange incantation-like passages.

“Yknow, contrary to what Dillinger says, I actually like looking for books on my own. I found this a few weeks ago but I kept chickening out on checking it out from the library,” she said. “So I just kept coming here to look at it. But now I have an excuse.”

“You sure you’re not a witch, Lora?”

“Yeah, course you’d ask that Flynn, you probably have a thing for witches.”

“Maybe so, maybe so, Lora dearest;” Flynn, in his best (worst) British accent; “But I say Lora, for the project, why this and not, perchance, uhhhh…;” slipping out of it; “I dunno, something a bit more straightforward weird? Like I was thinking some book about serial killers or something. We could make a game where you stabbed people. That would freak Dillinger out.”

“Ixnay on the serial killer thing, but the rest of it I agree with Flynn on,” Alan said, and adjusted his glasses. “How in hell are we supposed to make this into a project for class? I’m pretty sure Professor Dill Pickle over there wants something a little more straightforward. You know, like based on...Greek myths, or something. Lets you pick which fair maiden to bestow the golden apple file on. Or whatever. Not...whatever this is.” He paused. “Though it does look cool.”

Lora was flipping through the pages again. Roy caught glimpses of illustrations and lines in between, and tried to make sense of them. Mostly there were silhouetted drawn figures in various poses, holding different versions of that shape they’d seen on the cover, leaning over text boxes. He wondered if those were really an authentic part of the book, or whether the recent publisher had added them to try and make it more hip, or something.

A few phrases, too, though she was moving it quickly—“open the gateway,” “designate the likeness to task”—it was all very strange. Lora seemed very excited about it, though.

“This does look like an occult thing,” Roy said finally.

“I mean, it kinda is?” She shrugged. “But like, in a cool way.” She opened it flat to one page. On it was an illustration of one of those shadows reaching a simplistic hand out to the face of a rectangular shape, and a sort of reflection of the figure reaching back, their hands meeting in the middle.

“Listen, we don’t have to do anything differently with our code projects,” Lora said. “We can all just do what we were originally going to work on, and just hide stuff from the book in the documentation comments. Dillinger will look at it and be weirded out for certain, but he won’t be able to say we didn’t do what he told us, huh? We incorporated literature into our project. Just not his literature. Plus, this stuff IS pretty rad.” 

Flynn was nodding. Alan still looked skeptical.

“And you think this counts for the project...how?” He pushed his glasses up on his nose in almost a caricature of nerdiness.

“I mean, if we look at the syllabus, we can make it fit…” And she was turning pages again; she’d clearly been looking at the book for a while before meeting up with the group. 

They poured over the tome some more. Roy had to admit it was interesting, and agreed to join the project just because he didn’t have any better ideas. 

Flynn was already in. Alan was reluctant, but signed on “because I love you guys,” and Roy winced a tiny bit, wishing he’d come up with a reason that simple but warm. They all high-fived above the book lying on the table and Lora took it with her, clutching it close to her side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title is from Blue Monday by New Order


	2. pick me up and shake the doubt

They stayed late after class and waited till Dillinger had left the computer lab room. The moment they saw his silhouette slip out the door, the four of them gathered around the terminal Kevin had nabbed in the back

“How are we doing this again?” Roy said.

“Dunno. Kinda winging it.”

Great. Exactly what he had thought Flynn would say.

“Didn’t you say you figured we’d all name our projects after the things from the book?” Lora, prompting.

“What things?”

“Yknow, the what-do-you-call-it’s.”

“The persona roles?” 

“Whoa there, Alan!” And Kevin leaned back in the chair precariously to hit Alan with a trademark smirk. “Thought you thought this idea was dumb. Didn’t realize you were the occult expert now.”

“Alright, first off, I thought you said this wasn’t the occult, and second off, I never half ass something, so I figured I’d do my research.” Alan shoved the chair forward so that Kevin wasn’t hanging in space anymore. 

“Oh it’s totally the occult.” And Kevin winked. And the other three rolled their eyes.

Roy didn’t really get the point of what they were doing. Naming different folders and paths after titles from the book, adding weird ASCII designs where they knew Dillinger would look. It all seemed pretty superficial, but at the same time, knowing how their professor squinted when he heard his students talk about what music they were listening to these days, he figured it would do the trick.

So he played along with it, and named his project “role_Chronicler” and arranged all the tabs in the same weird way Flynn did. 

“Does any of this actually affect how the programs will run?” Alan, piping up again.

“Not as far as I know, to be honest,” Flynn said. “but it’s gonna make Dillinger think we’re in a cult, so that’s worth it.”

“No, really though, ‘Kev,” Roy said, “I don’t want us getting a bad grade because we fucked up the functions by putting little devil horns on them with brackets or something.”

“Relax!” Flynn was leaning back in his chair again. “It’s gonna be fine.”

“What’s the plan for what we’re actually making these programs for?” Lora, always practical. “I honestly don’t know what to do with mine. What type of program could I make that fits a name like “Navigator,” anyway?” 

“Well, role_Guardian is security based, right Alan?”

“Yeah.”

“And yours is for keeping records of changes?” Flynn was looking at Roy, and Roy nodded.

“And mine is for delegating tasks to other branches. So maybe yours could be something that ties them all together?”

“Huh. Maybe.”

“Why does yours get to be the boss, huh, Flynn?” Alan rolled his eyes. “All hail the grand dictator of them all,” and he fake-curtsied, and nearly tripped on the carpet. Lora smirked at him, and he frowned and brushed off the dust from his hair.

“Cause I came up with the idea?” The smirk from Lora became a scowl. “I mean, uh, well, I guess that Lora came up with the idea, and uh—“

“Oh just can it Flynn, admit you made yours the leader or whatever cause you could,” she said, cutting him off. For once, he shrank in his seat. Roy just watched. 

The four of them laid down the groundwork for their projects, leaving a lot open to do later, but enough so that they could show the professor their work next class. After a while though, Lora was obviously antsy, and Alan kept checking his watch, so they all figured it was time to go.

“You guys wanna hang out at my apartment after this?” Kevin, shoving his stuff in his backpack roughly.

“I’ve got a presentation tomorrow I’ve gotta work on, sorry.”

“Aw. We’ll miss ya, Roy,” he said, but as he turned away Roy had this sneaking suspicion that he wouldn’t. The three of them, sans Roy himself, had been hanging out more and more lately. 

“Alright.” Roy was halfway out the door of the computer lab when he remembered something. “Could you save my project for me? I left it open on the terminal.”

“Sure,” Flynn said. “I’ll get everybody’s. You guys go on ahead.”

Alan already had his Walkman in and was out the door. Lora said she had to drop something off at her dorm, and turned off to the left down the hall. And Roy was already out of the building by the time Flynn sorted out his bag and went to deactivate the terminal.

In truth, he wasn’t that into the whole thing—he just always was up for a good prank, which he deemed this one to be. But the whole spooky cult thing made him roll his eyes. Lora had been enthusiastic about it, though, and that was all the confirmation he really needed.

He hit save on role_Chronicler, role_Guardian, role_Navigator, and finally his own, role_Luminary (which he admittedly thought was a stupid name for a program.) But he kept it, mostly because he wanted to freak out Dillinger, but partially because something small but certain inside him said it fit.

And he’d always been one to go with his gut, after all.

Walking away from the lab, Flynn had the oddest sense that he was beginning something serious.

He chalked it up to hunger and headed to grab a coffee before going home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title is from Situation by Yaz


	3. i follow where my mind goes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: drinking

“So are you coming tonight?”

A few days later, after a full Friday of classes, Roy and Flynn were at Flynn’s apartment, the one perched over the arcade he worked at.

None of them were exactly certain how Flynn had gotten such a good apartment, considering he was in college just like the rest of them, but the story went that he’d used his typical level of charm to convince the old guy who ran the arcade that he’d be a good person to apartment-sit the extra room up there, and somehow it had worked.

The owner himself lived somewhere on the third floor of the building, and tended to leave most of the day to day operations to the young college kids he hired to run the place. People rarely saw him. Flynn was always marveling at how weird it was that an old guy like that would run an arcade at all, but he figured that if he knew what the kids liked to do these days, then good for him. It meant the four of them all had a de facto place to hang out, anyway.

(“I wonder what he does when nobody’s around?” Flynn had said at some point. “I bet he’s got some freaky sex dungeon hidden behind one of the arcade machines.”

“Flynn!” Alan had said, scandalized.

“If he did I _ know _ you would’ve found it by now.” Lora, rolling her eyes, getting ready to chuck a pillow at him.

“Touché.”)

“Hello? Earth to Roy?” Flynn was snapping his fingers in front of his face. Roy blinked.

At some point, he had zoned out. He wasn’t sure whether it was just the academic stress, the changing of the seasons, or what, but something felt distinctly off to him about this week; he certainly hadn’t been keeping track of what the gang’s weekend plans were.

“We’re going to that party I told you about last week,” Flynn said, fidgeting with some trinket that had been lying on the table and spinning it around on his finger. He was lying on a couch made for several people, lounging like a Roman, kicking one foot lazily in the air. (Flynn insisted that he’d scavenged that particular couch on a curb when the senior students had been moving out last spring, but Roy knew it had been in the room when he got there—he’d helped Kevin move in.)

“Uh…” Roy had completely forgotten about this party. Between midterms and that new job Lora got as a research assistant, he had assumed the group would be too busy for anything this weekend.

It didn’t sound like a bad idea, honestly. Besides, it was rare that he be invited to a party with the three of them. He wasn’t as much of a party person, after all.

“I mean, sure, I got nothing else to do,” he said.

“Great. Alan and Lora already said they’re going. It’s gonna be a good time.” He sat up on the couch and started digging through his backpack.

“Where are they, anyway? Aren’t they supposed to be here?”

“They went out to get food together after class.” Flynn rolled his eyes. “You know how they are.”

Roy only half did. But he nodded anyway.

——-

The party was admittedly overrated. Probably the most exciting part was when some guy (a jock, who was absolutely hammered) jumped on and subsequently broke the pool table in the basement. But other than that, Roy thought it was pretty boring. These types of parties just weren’t really his thing.

Thankfully, Flynn and Alan both looked bored too, Flynn tapping his leg in that jittery pent-up way he did when he was antsy and Alan continuously checking his calculator watch.

Lora was dancing, but halfheartedly. She kept looking towards the door.

“Is it just me or does this party kinda suck?” she said, flopping her hair over her shoulder like a hairspray commercial.

“I think you’re right on that one. You wanna take a 6 pack from under the table when nobody’s looking and ditch?” Roy, trying to make a plan.

“I’m literally already on it, man.” And somehow Flynn was, with an armful of two of them.

Flynn was more drunk than Roy had thought he was. Somehow, on the way back to his apartment, the number of beers he was carrying had gone down by at least one and a half, and he’d drank more when he was at the party itself. He had passed the full 6-pack over to Lora to carry and now he had his arm around Roy for support. Alan had ducked out of the way, muttering something about how there should be _ Someone _competent leading the group, leaving Roy to hold up the conquering hero and his rapidly deflating beer cache. 

The autumn evening air whipped at their heels as they ducked under streetlights. 

“We going back to your place?” Alan. 

“Where else, man? Hell, it’s late enough that the arcade’s probably closed. The old man gave me the keys, we could probably mess with the speakers and play our own music.” Flynn rolled his eyes. “Those guys at the party had shit taste.” 

Eventually they made it back. The arcade wasn’t closed, but the only people around at this hour were a few high school kids who looked ready to leave. Flynn led his three friends upstairs, stumbling briefly on the stairs, Alan catching the nearly-dropped now-4-pack before his friend could totally fumble it. 

“You guys follow me around like a buncha ducks. What gives!” Flynn was drunk for sure now, and he flopped down on the same couch he had been on a few hours before. 

“I mean, you did invite us to your apartment, so—“ Roy paused as he sat down in an adjacent armchair, perplexed. “What’s that over at your desk?” 

It was a big cardboard box full of floppy disks, the type they used in their class. 

“Oh...that? I took my project home to work on it. Figured I’d get ahead, ya know? Is that so weird?” Flynn waved his hand, nonchalant, but somewhat defensive underneath. 

It was a little weird, actually. They weren’t close to the due date, and it would be a hassle to haul the floppies to and from school if he wanted to keep everything updated. Roy wondered if they were actually for some other project, but kept his mouth shut. 

“Real like you to be so proactive, huh,” Alan, smirking. 

“Hey, if he wants to get his shit together, let him!” Lora, also laughing a little, definitely less drunk than him. 

“I’m right here, you know!” Flynn got up. “Why are we talking about homework, anyway. We came here to have fun, didn’t we?” He stepped a bit shakily towards the boom box he had in the corner of his room and rummaged around a box of cassettes. “What do you want? Journey?”

“If we play Journey you and Alan are gonna get all sad again.” Lora, rolling her eyes. “This happens every time you get drunk.” 

“Does not!” Alan, indignant. 

“I mean you did cry on my shoulder the last time.” 

“Did he really?” Roy had not heard about this. 

“Would Kevin lie?” 

“Lora, Kevin would DEFINITELY lie, are we talking about the same guy?” 

“Alright, Duran Duran it is, then,” Flynn said to cut the banter in half, and snapped the cassette in. 

Roy had another beer. He was bored enough that he figured it would be at least more fun to get more drunk, and besides, he didn’t have anything to do tomorrow. 

They all hung around up there for a while, waiting for the last few kids to leave the arcade. Some of Kevin’s coworkers (other college students, mostly, some who also rented apartments in the building upstairs) were closing the place up. 

Something felt boring but oddly anticipatory, like they were waiting for something that wasn’t coming. At least it was more interesting for Roy to watch Kevin trip over his own feet than watch jocks throw ping-pong balls in cups back at that party. 

It always felt a little like this with the three of them. Roy felt like he was trying all the time to determine where he fit in—between. When Alan had gotten a girlfriend, he’d braced for taking a side role, and then when that girlfriend had brought along her weirdly close ex, he’d readjusted his plans again and resigned himself to probably getting left out for the foreseeable future. 

But it hadn’t worked out exactly like that. Well, sometimes he thought they really only had room for each other, but then they’d invite him to hang out or Flynn would do something genuinely nice for him, and he wouldn’t know again. There was a strange dynamic that played out again and again—Flynn as the daring but reckless one, Lora optimistic but practical, Alan protective but a little stiff. He wondered how they would all describe him. 

Roy was the sort of drunk who would, after enough drinks, catch himself staring at a wall un absent emptiness, till he blinked and found himself minutes later like the alien-ghost of tequila or whatever he’d happened to have had abducted him and left him missing time. Somewhere in between the fourth and sixth beer, when he looked up again, the sound of kids had completely left the building, and most of the game lights had been turned off. Neons on the wall still flashed, the stereo downstairs was blaring—_ don’t you want me baby!— _and Roy was the only one in the apartment.

The room felt a little fuzzy as he struggled to up, and his footsteps sounded muffled to his ears, or a little artificial, like he was stepping on a surface that wasn’t quite real, even though he knew it was just Flynn’s ratty apartment carpet. He looked down and out the window to see Flynn and Alan and Lora dancing around amidst the machines, all clearly pretty drunk—not that Roy wasn’t either, the whole scene looked out of focus to him and he kept forgetting he was holding his beer. He watched for a while, infinitely amused—it didn’t seem too bad, for a second, to be out of the frame, to be the one who told the story later instead of being in it. 

The lines of the neons on the machines and on the walls blurred with the fog on the window from his breath. There was a dreamlike qualityabout the scene—song changing now, _ there’s a room where the light won’t find you _—and Roy blinked repeatedly to try and clear a haze that wouldn’t dissipate. His mouth tasted like crappy beer, but also tangy like metal, and he wondered if he’d bit his tongue without realizing. 

Below he saw Kevin staring intently at the screen of a game console that wasn’t even on. Lora and Alan had sat down underneath the emergency exit sign, red shaft of light casting Alan in an eerie glow, Lora clinging to his arm either already passed out or very dizzy. 

The soft heaviness of the light was starting to get to Roy. Trying to keep an eye on all his friends at once, he felt pulled down by a gravity all his own. The window was even foggier than before.

The indistinct blur of his reflection looked almost like it was glowing blue. 

“_ It’s not too bad being up here, right?” _it said, shifting around to look out the window too. 

Roy stopped his train of thought, startled, but not questioning enough of the apparition to be afraid. “What?” 

“_ Safer, I mean, and you know all the risks,” _ the reflection replied. “ _ And look at them. It’s kind of nice just watching, huh?” _

“I don’t think I understand.” 

“_ Does it feel right to be up here? To let them lead? These things have a hierarchy. It took me a while to find a place in it.” _

Roy shook his head. “The….the fuck are you talking about?” 

The reflection, blurry-edged and expressionless as it was, still seemed to deflate a little. “_ Would you call that an official rejection, or……?” _

“...no?” He really didn’t understand, honestly. He was too drunk for this. Something in him prodded his mind to finish his reply. “Not yet, anyway.” 

It brightened, quite literally; lights on its chest and in the pinpricks of its eyes flared a little bit, and it nodded. “_ All right. I’ll log that. For later anyway.” _

“You gonna let me be drunk in peace?” 

“_ Oh, of course.” _And it was gone from both view and thought so fast that Roy nearly forgot why he was standing at the window in the first place. He looked quizzically at the beer in his hand, down into the arcade at Kevin (now passed out on the ground next to the machine), and decided to just flop back down on the couch. 

What few dreams he had between then and morning were tinted blue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from Love My Way by The Psychedelic Furs


	4. hear no evil in all directions

When the morning sun filtered in through the ratty orange blinds Flynn had insisted on keeping over the windows, Roy awoke to find that sometime in the night, his three friends had in fact made it upstairs, and had all passed out once again on the opposite couch, laying all over each other.

Roy sighed, rubbing his eyes in a futile attempt to physically wrench the hangover out of them. The small of his back was weirdly sore—he must have slept in a bad position.

He glanced over at his friends again. Flynn had his head in Alan’s lap, which was unusual—usually (this wasn’t the first time they’d been like this) Alan leaned on Lora and Flynn was somewhere on the end. Absently, Roy wondered whether the interconnected relationship the three of them had been dancing around had become official at some point when he wasn’t watching.

Good for them, if it had. There was only a small part of him that felt left out, anyway.

Abruptly Flynn sat bolt upright, startling both Alan and Roy across the room.

“Shit, what time is it? I gotta get the arcade ready.” He got up and started putting random things away in the room. “You guys seen my shirt? Where is it?”

Lora stretched her arms with a cartoonish yawn. “Iunno, macho man, where is it ever? It’s not even hot out, I still don’t know why you manage to lose it every time we hang out here.”

“You left it on top of Pac-Man,” Roy said, peering out the window. Also on top of Pac-Man were several red solo cups.

“How the fuck did it get up there?” Flynn, exasperated, still fussing around looking for things.

“Hell if I know.” Alan, muffled, digging under the couch for his dorm room key.

—  
Roy had always heard people say that you became better friends with people when you had to suffer through something difficult with them. He’d never really believed it, but the differential equations midterm had him reconsidering.

“Iunno why they insist on calling it a “midterm” anyway. We have two of them before the final,” Flynn complained, “and we’re all gonna fail both of them at this rate.”

The four of them had essentially camped out at the library in the center of campus. Flynn had smuggled in snacks, bottled coffee, and energy drinks, which they all passed around in the hopes of staying awake.

It was nearly midnight, but the library was open all night during midterms. They’d been going for hours, working on the practice problem sets they’d been assigned.

“None of this makes any sense!” Lora threw her hands up in the air like a cartoon character. “I don’t think we even went over any of this in our class.”

“They didn’t. I think that’s the point.” Roy, not looking up from his paper.

“Hell of a fuckin point, if you ask me—“

“Could you assholes quiet down?” Alan’s head snapped up on an instant and he glared at Flynn with an intensity Roy hadn’t thought possible. “SOME of us are trying to get things done.”

Flynn audibly gulped, Lora looked away. Alan resumed his work.

Roy stole a glance at him out of the corner of his eye. Alan was a strong guy, he always had been, but in that way that you wouldn’t know unless you knew what to look for. He had helped Roy move into his dorm room—Roy’s mom had laughed and said she hadn’t expected a beanpole like him to haul things that well, and Alan had laughed in that polite way in response.

He never really was one to flaunt things. But lately, exam season had had him showing more emotion and frustration—and more strength—than usual. He would glare at his calc textbook like it was his mortal enemy. He shoved doors open with gusto, snapped faster when Flynn told one too many wisecracks.

It wasn’t worrying, or super out of the ordinary. But it was a little strange.

It did start getting weird when Alan got a new desk for his dorm room. The previous one had busted a leg (Alan didn’t explain why) and he’d put in a request to Housing for a new one; for some reason, though, they’d left the damn thing downstairs in the dorm lobby with a sticky note with Alan’s name on it. Alan lived on the eighth floor of the dorm.

“Who the fuck does that?” said Flynn, he and Alan and Roy standing in a dejected semicircle around the offending piece of furniture.

Roy had to admit the whole thing was a pretty weird way to deliver a desk, but he didn’t get why the other two were so mad about it. He had been walking the same way after class, though, so he figured he’d stick around.

“Couldn’t they have at least put it on the elevator up to your floor?” he said.

“I bet the dolley didn’t fit,” Alan said, hand on his chin, clearly trying to work out how he was going to get this thing upstairs.

“Yeah and the desk too? How did they get all the other desks in the building then? By lowering them in with a crane?” Flynn, rolling his eyes. “Yknow, with the way things are at this school sometimes I wouldn’t doubt it--”

“Could you let me THINK for five seconds?” Alan shot a glare at him, doing that pinching-the-bridge-of-his-nose thing he did when he was irritated. Kevin shut his mouth like a trash can with the lid fallen down quick.

“We’re going to have to pick it up ourselves and take it into the elevator,” he finally said. “Back up.”

And before anyone could protest Alan bent his knees and lifted, as the group watched in bewilderment, the entire desk into the elevator on his own and dropped it down with a huff.

“Dude. If you’d just asked—“

“Flynn, if I had needed your help I would’ve asked! I can do it myself.” Alan looked more than a little red in the face from exertion as he pushed the button for his floor, but also radiated a weird sort of combination of pride, irritation, and resignment, knuckles still white around the edge of the desk.

Roy figured this was one to let the two of them handle on their own, and walked off just as the elevator door closed between Alan on the inside and Flynn, dejected, on the outside.

Probably the strangest bit, though, _was_ that night of the exam study session. They’d all been known to pull all nighters, and during midterms and finals, the library was open 24 hours. The four of them had drank plenty of coffee, but they just must not have timed it right, because around the 2 am mark, Roy looked over from reading a problem aloud as quietly as he could to find both Lora and Flynn asleep, her head nestled in her arms and Flynn just straight up passed out on top of his books.

He trailed off mid-problem, figuring nobody was listening. Well, it was that time, he figured. Roy was getting pretty sleepy himself.

He started packing things back into his backpack--textbook, pencil case, clunky scientific calculator--in an attempt to make it padded enough to serve as some sort of pillow. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d fallen asleep in the library during a midterm or final, and he knew from experience it wasn’t great on the neck. Shifting the backpack around on the desk as quietly as he could so as not to wake Flynn or Lora, he tried to get comfortable.

From his sideways-view with his head lying on the front pocket of the backpack, he could see Alan was still awake. His back was to Roy, and he was sitting ram-rod straight in his chair, almost unnaturally so.

“You all good, Alan?” Roy said, sleepily.

Alan twitched slightly as if he’d been disturbed from some sort of meditation.

“...Yes, I think so.”

“Whatcha doing? ‘S two AM.” Roy, halfway gone already.

“Keeping watch.”

“For what?” That had Roy confused enough to stay awake a while longer.

“...Iunno, really.” He turned to the side, and the part of his face Roy could see looked surprised, as if he hadn’t considered it before.  
”You ever get that feeling like you’re supposed to be waiting for something, and…” Alan paused. “And if you let it go past you, something awful will happen?”

Roy didn’t really have a good answer for that one, but as he blinked to try and glean a few more seconds of wakefulness, Alan’s silhouette against the dim-flickering fluorescent bar lights of the library seemed to have a double outline, a sort of glowing border, blue and electric in the gloom.

“....G’night Alan,” Roy said, not finding the energy to question it all, and fell asleep before he could hear a reply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for not updating this fic in so long! I really love the world of it and want to continue it, I'd just been a little bit stuck as to where to go next. Chapter title is from Don't Change by INXS


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